A Post-Partum Father's Day Feeling

Father’s Day came and went again this year…and my emotions on this day are always ambivalent. On my tenth birthday (over forty years ago now) my own father suffered a cerebral hemorrhage which along with some paralysis and partial brain damage left him anything but the kind of man I, at that age, was proud to call daddy. I really never got to know my father in those first ten years of my life. I remember I was confused, and ashamedly embarrassed by a condition he certainly hadn’t any control over. Still, these are the feelings I experienced and although I had been exemplifying aspects of being an extrovert at the time, I retreated and became introverted and painfully shy.

Basically all I remember about those earliest of years is dad seemed to always be working. For my male mentoring my grandfathers and uncles tried to pick up the slack and often told me stories about what a hard driving, competitive type of man my dad had been...you know, before. It was impressed upon me that my dad had been chasing the American dream for his family and climbing the corporate ladder…and I’d like to say I missed not knowing him…but I don’t even know if that’s true or not. I’m pretty sure he must once have had a great sense of humor and I always did love hearing any story he ever told me.

He died not long after I graduated from college and although there was an ongoing relationship during those intervening ten to twelve years…I have always felt that something significant in my life was missed by not having (forgive me) a “real father.”

Of course, at the age of seventeen, I entered in to a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, but I’ll admit that I’d developed a pretty intense shell around my heart by that time…and having God as a father-figure was intriguing, exciting and wholly fulfilling until my introverted extroverted rebelliousness (it’s really hard to explain) ran head-long into your Christian church-going types. Quickly I remember wondering “Where’s the love, man?” “Do we even know the same God?” And over the years I’ve continually had to ask why does the “organized church” keep harping to people that they have to do this or that certain thing, in a particular way, which I never have found out where these notions originated?

So, I never really had an opportunity to get to know my earthly father. And for thirty-five plus years I’ve been wanting to know more and more about my heavenly father. I've also learned a good deal of tedious and unflattering things about myself along the way as well. I’ll want to venture in to this some next time but let me leave you with thoughts contained in chapter 14 of Mark’s gospel account right before Jesus gets executed,

“They went to the olive grove called Gethsemane, and Jesus said, ‘Sit here while I go and pray.’ He took Peter, James, and John with him, and he became deeply troubled and distressed. He told them, ‘My soul is crushed with grief to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.’

He went on a little farther and fell to the ground. He prayed that, if it were possible, the awful hour awaiting him might pass him by. ‘Abba, Father,’ he cried out, ‘everything is possible for you. Please take this cup of suffering away from me. Yet I want your will to be done, not mine.’”

and then this if from 1 John 3,

“How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called the children of God!”

Have a great week. Ever yours regardlessly,

mike